


Not Digging Literally

by testedcyberneticz



Category: SteamWorld Dig (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fluff and Angst, KIND OF I GUESS
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-27
Updated: 2019-10-27
Packaged: 2021-01-04 17:55:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21201734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/testedcyberneticz/pseuds/testedcyberneticz
Summary: Dorothy has had something bothering her for a long time.





	Not Digging Literally

**Author's Note:**

> Wow over think hours..... Anyway I wish Dorothy and fen interacted more like literally all 6 hours of the game but the obvious cannot happen so u have this now!

First her friend goes missing, and now she waits a small amount of time so she can get ready, and then this happens.

Her dad, dead.

Because she _totally_ needed that right now and _totally_ wasn't about to go into a breakdown had it not been for the fact Lola was there to help her. And she _absolutely_ wasn't crying right now and _absolutely_ had not lost yet another important person.

What was she supposed to do now? Great, now she has to live with the fact the last thing she was doing upset her father greatly. The last thing being close to leaving Tumbleton.

And then he was starting to not be well. It got worse no matter what she did.

And now he's dead. Forever.

And she was, in the end, the last one he saw. She wondered for a second if he felt disappointment as he died, but blocked it out so she wouldn't begin to have a breakdown of some kind again.

It wasn't like he had been a bad parent! He just... Was overprotective. _Very_ overprotective. And if you mapped every reason on why, you'd get buried under them. And that included him not wanting her to leave Tumbleton. It was dangerous out there, and safe here, to him at least.

But what did that matter now? He was dead, he wasn't coming back. This town was already so much smaller now.

-

Of all the things she had expected to see, these were not it. First of all, seeing a cultist. Second, seeing a cultist die. And finally, seeing Vectron tech all the way up here. And then she fought it, and won. And then out came... Something. It was weird.

She decided to completely guess.

"You look like some sort of Vectron sprite, how's that even possible?"

Apparently she learned from the conversation that ensued that she had somehow guessed right. She also learned that this annoying sprite was absolutely not going to leave her.

-

This place was overwhelming. As in, there was more people than she's ever been around in her entire life. It was loud here too, and ladders were needed to get around. It was huge, and made her feel ready to explode. Luckily, someone else was here who felt the same.

And then Fen was immediately rude to her.

Oh yeah, she had named them that. Apparently Vectron just... Gave them no name.

Either way, luckily, she wouldn't be up here much. She had someone to look for after all.

-

It had been awhile since this all started. Searching for someone and digging took a long time. Eventually Fen and her were getting closer, somewhat. They didn't try to get her to get herself killed now, at least. It was something. And at this point, she was desperate for anything good.

Though she noticed something was... _Wrong_, with Fen, right now. She could feel it, they seemed somewhat distracted. When her bag got full they didn't even call her an idiot the last few times.

Suddenly, their voice broke the silence like glass, "Do you know what it's like where... Hm..." Fen's voice got caught.

Dorothy stopped whatever she was doing.

"Where you know where you were created was bad but the more you think about it, the worst you realize?" Frankly, she was rather... Shocked. Shocked that Fen was suddenly being open about Vectron at all. Sure, they hadn't said the name, but it was obvious what they were talking about.

"Yeah." She responded with absolutely no hesitation.

_Wait._

_Why had she just said that._

Her eyes visibly widened at what she had just said, and the fact she just hadn't hesitated at all when saying it. Her mind had been pretty clear when they had asked, so she had no excuse there.

"I mean- I mean no!" She noticed her own voice had gone shakey. Was she seriously doubting herself right now? She slid her blue hand on her forehead and under her goggles as she let out a noise of frustration, then looked nervously away from Fen.

"You don't seem sure..."

"I'm _not_!" She was feeling... Something boil up inside her. Pressure? Maybe pressure from everything? Had she been holding something in without realizing?

For the rest of the entire day both were completely quiet.

-

The campfire was nice. She didn't like sleeping in the city, the mere thought was discomforting. She basically had a campfire going just by the city, not too close, not too far. Fen liked it too, at least.

She had been thinking about what she had said. It was barely any words, and yet the meaning behind it meant everything, nearly.

She sighed.

"Thanks." She suddenly said to Fen, despite them being inside her furnace. Fen suddenly shot out of her furnace so fast the furnace door shook. They looked... Surprised.

"What." That sounded more like a statement, if anything.

"Th... Thanks? For opening up to me a bit, I mean." Her expression became anxious at their reaction.

They were quiet.

"Did I say something wrong?" She asked worriedly.

"I never really... Have had someone say that to me before and actually _mean_ _it_." Fen's stressed and nervous look made sense now, they didn't know what to say or how to react at all in response. A part of that sentence made her confused, but she understood what they were getting at.

"That's okay." She wasn't sure what to say either. She had never met someone with this issue.

"You're up later than usual." Stated Fen suddenly. She was quiet for exactly ten seconds.

"When did _you_ start caring about that?" She immediately knew she wouldn't get an answer to that. Fen wasn't open about that, "I've just been stressed."

"Oh. Was it because what I asked?" They both knew what they were talking about.

That set off a switch in her. She didn't know how, but it did. It was like everything she had been holding in had just been told to let go, to stop being held back. She had been holding so much in for so long, and then more.

"It's more how I responded, I just... Didn't hesitate, which is weird. Tumbleton isn't that bad, I've lived there my whole _life_! I never left until this whole mess! It can't have had been that bad to the point I agreed without hesitating! Right? I- I mean, " It felt like she genuinely couldn't stop herself, no matter how much she wanted to. She was just so tired, she was tired of holding everything in and tired of so much just constantly happening, "I know I didn't even _have_ any friends until I met Rusty, and- and that no one else really even could _be_ my friend. Everyone else was like a family figure to me, Joe was weird and kind of caused this mess in the first place, so- so now Rusty is missing, and the only other person who's even around my age is some guy I didn't know until recently and for some reason he wants me to date him without even knowing anything about me or what I like!" By now, her voice had gone from somewhat calm to an extremely panicked state.

"_Dorothy_-?"

"And now that _one_ friend I have suddenly disappears and my dad is dead and there's those Doomsday Devices..." She trailed off and stopped herself. Did she really just accidentally vent that hard to _Fen_, of all people?

It felt horrible.

She let out a huge sigh, "I'm sorry I didn't mean to..."

"Well, you're the first... _Nice_ steambot I've met. If that helps, anyway." Their tone was noticeably... Softer than usual.

"Huh?" She questioned, more questioning the tone than their words.

"I- I mean. It's. Whatever, it's fine." Fen seemed to notice their own tone too, and changed it to sound half more harsh.

She couldn't help but, though tiredly, smile.

-

She was really talented at losing people she cares about, wasn't she? Sure, Rusty was back, she found and saved him. But Fen had truly saved the two of them, and paid the price. Sure, it had been quite a long while since then, society was even back in order, but she still thought about it way too much for her own good.

She wondered what she could've done differently, (for starters, not trust Shiners ever again. And maybe be less trusting in general.) or how she could've made it all even worse. It obviously wasn't _healthy_, per say, but she was getting better at not doing it so much. It wasn't daily. Every other day was better than daily. She was getting better.

It was weird, when she thought about it. A common loop was she would feel guilty about the whole situation, remember the fact she was tricked and lied to, feel slightly less guilty, then somehow convince herself that she was just making up excuses and it actually was entirely her fault, then feel twice as guilty.

Rusty helped a lot, and also had similar feelings, too. Especially considering he's the one who found Vectron. At the least, they both had eachother, in the end.

And they would both heal.

Eventually.


End file.
